It took me a long time to understand this, and honestly, I learned it the hard way. Before Covid, I used to treat every task like it was life-or-death. Every project felt urgent. Every meeting felt critical. Every message felt like it needed an immediate response. I thought being busy meant being valuable, and being constantly available meant being indispensable.
Then Covid hit, and everything I believed about “importance” flipped. One day I was in the middle of juggling deadlines, and the next I was sick—scared, exhausted, and completely unable to function. And in that forced stillness, something I’d never allowed myself to see became painfully clear: the world kept moving without me.
The emails were answered. The meetings continued. Decisions were made. Work went on. Not because I wasn’t good at what I did, but because no one—not me, not anyone—is truly irreplaceable at work. Life doesn’t pause to wait for you to feel better. Companies don’t collapse because one person steps away. And that realization, strangely enough, was liberating.
It stripped away the illusion that every little thing I stressed over was essential. When you’re lying in bed, fighting to breathe comfortably or just trying to get through the day, the things we normally obsess about shrink to their real size. You stop caring about the noise. You stop trying to be a superhero. All that matters is getting better. All that matters is your health.
And it hits you with a clarity that feels almost embarrassing: you weren’t carrying the world. You were carrying expectations—mostly your own. The real foundation of your life wasn’t your productivity, your title, or the number of hours you put in. It was your body, quietly holding you up every single day.
COVID taught me what no manager, no mentor, no motivational quote ever could: everything is “super important” until your health isn’t there to support it. And when your body decides to shut down, every meeting, deadline, and task you thought was critical suddenly becomes irrelevant. The only thing that truly matters is getting your strength back.
But here’s the tricky part—we tend to forget this once we recover. We slide back into the rush, the pressure, the constant urgency. We forget we were once lying in bed wishing for nothing more than the ability to breathe normally and enjoy a meal. We forget how fragile we felt. Until the next reminder comes.
The real challenge isn’t realizing what matters when you’re sick. It’s remembering it when you’re well.
So maybe it’s time to start treating health the way we treat our most important commitments. Listen to your body when it whispers, not when it screams. Rest before you’re forced to. Protect your peace like your life depends on it—because, in a way, it does.
Everything else—the work, the busyness, the pressure—will always find a way to sort itself out. You, on the other hand, get only one body and one life. And when everything else stops making sense, your health is the one thing that still will.
Kenrick Vaz 